Face and Guanxi

Detained by security for trespassing on an unrestored section of the Great Wall.

Eyes hot, vocal chords straining, fingers gripping my arm, the officer hollered into my face. Alternately he glared at my friend, similarly gripped by another officer.

We deserved it. We were at Mu Tian Yu, a farther and less visited section of the Great Wall. What you’ve seen in all the photos is Ba Da Ling, a section restored through great effort. Vegetation had worn down the original wall, stones wedged aside by roots. The Mu Tian Yu section was similarly restored, but at one far end we could see the raw wall. It fascinated us; it beckoned with historic authenticity. A sign across the partition forbade access. We climbed over anyway, to trek along an area few people see.

Unlike the paved stone elsewhere, here the top surface was mainly dirt, grasses and shrubs. Each side had crumbled into a toothy edge. We’d traveled past two partitions in wonderment before a pair of huffing security guards caught up and seized us. Intent on pressing forward, we hadn’t even realized we were being pursued.

I broke a few rules in China. The prospect of being deported or ending up in a Chinese jail didn’t seem realistic to me. Yes, I was brazen and stupid. Yes, the Great Wall officers were right to be furious. My friend and I were being ugly Americans, acting as if the rules didn’t apply to us.

Recognizing this, in the face of confrontation we assumed the opposite attitude: meek submission. Our shoulders slooped, faces fell; our eyes became concerned. “Dui bu qi (Excuse us),” we kept repeating, “Women bu ji dao (We don’t know).” It was the argumentative version of a judo throw, using the attacker’s momentum against him: move with a shove and the shover topples.

And so he did. After a tirade of several minutes, the officer escorted us back to the tourist area in silence — then, miraculously, began speaking in a lightened tone, agreeable, nearly jovial. He asked about our families; we asked about his. He even allowed us to take a photo with his underling. By the time we reached the parking lot we were all great friends.

Bizarre? Welcome to face.

In a culture that valued harmony and conciliation, losing temper was shameful – a loss of “face” or respectability. Because the guard had unleashed his full temper at us he became supremely uncomfortable, and felt the need to redeem his status in our eyes. Our contrite demeanors had left him floundering on a limb by himself, behaving in a manner uncalled for by the social situation. The resulting turnaround in his demeanor was striking.

The need to save face disinclined the Chinese to say no. A flat negative not only shamed the issuer (selfish!), it also shamed the receiver by suggesting the request had been inappropriate, that it had supposed too much of the relationship. Instead of saying no, the Chinese hemmed and hawed – or even answered yes while intending not to deliver. Such cases (I called them “pocket vetoes”) avoided direct and embarrassing scenes of rejection. Lin Da administrative staff used them often against me. The most striking instance occurred when I reserved the karaoke room for a party with my students. We showed up with food and decorations, all 48 students there for the event, only to be told the room was in use. It wasn’t – that was just the line I’d forced them to resort to because as an American I hadn’t realized I wasn’t well enough connected to book the karaoke room. Without access to a suitable space, we had to abandon our party.

During that year I grew into the habit of using pocket vetoes myself. It felt strangely comfortable to say yes but think inside, “Fat chance of that, you’re asking too much of me.” If by not delivering I left them in the lurch, well, it was their fault for asking the wrong person. This habit was still with me when I returned to America until, no lie, I lost a part-time job over it.

Entailed in the pocket veto was the concept of guanxi, or relational “pull.” In a Communist country where money was (hypothetically) evenly distributed, people climbed in rank and prestige through guanxi: favors granted to and obtained from others. It was all about connections: a total stranger had zero guanxi, no connection to you whatsoever. If she was in need of a bicycle pump, or if she drop her dongxi (stuff) all over the ground, you had no obligation to help – nor even any real motivation, because doing so would obligate her to repay the favor. No use creating needless obligatory relationships.

A best friend had tons of guanxi. You helped him, he helped you. Mental tabs kept relationships equitable — do something helpful for me, and you could expect a returned favor. In fact it would be incumbent upon you to allow me to reciprocate.

Guanxi could be paid off with gifts – a scroll of calligraphy, say, or a music CD. Gifts were even given preemptively — if someone bought you something nice without occasion, you could expect that in a day or two that person would ask for an out-of-the-ordinary favor.

You could pay off what you owed one person by tapping into what someone else owed you. When my mother visited me in China, the father of one of my students sent a cab to drive us to the Great Wall. “This must be expensive,” I told Tiger. “Tell your father thank you very much.”

“No, it is nothing,” Tiger said. “My father helped this man, and he owes my father a favor.” Tiger had guanxi with his father, who had guanxi with the driver of our cab, who therefore drove two Americans he didn’t know to the Great Wall.

You may wonder how I paid off such a huge favor. It wasn’t the only one: the week my mother came to Beijing my students showered her with gifts. Each time she unwrapped an ornate tea cup or calligraphy scroll, I winced. “Keep enjoying it,” I told her in private. “You get to hop on a plane and leave — I’m the one who’ll be stuck paying off all the guanxi.” What would my students want in return for honoring my mother?

Thankfully, nothing — teaching apparently instilled in students a sense of obligation, so mine had used my mother’s visit to pay off some of that guanxi.

Beyond the classroom, however, I was fairly guanxiless. I knew no one beyond the Lin Da Foreign Language Department, nor in Beijing for that matter. I couldn’t offer anyone free meals or hotel stays or cable TV access or car access or anything of the sort. All I had to offer was English. Yes, occasionally strangers approached me to ask for tutoring — and yes, I could have cultivated such opportunities, using them to develop my own guanxi. But away from my students I was more interested in learning Mandarin. So I remained a featherweight.

The guanxi system operates in America, too, only much more subtly. I can’t imagine anyone in America buying me a framed painting in order to ask me for tutoring.

Unrestored section of the Great Wall — sealed off to visitors, foreigner and national alike.

On an unrestored section of the Great Wall.

The restored Great Wall that visitors see. This is Badaling, the more popular section.

In one of the stations of the Great Wall, Mu Tian Yu section, with fellow teacher (right).

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